Voting for candidates for public office in the United States is largely carried out by use of portable voting machines of various types, including mechanical, optical and electronic machines. The machines are kept in a storage location until needed, then transported to various polling places within a voting district shortly before election day. Many of the voting machines available in the art are adapted to fit into a transport case, such as a suitcase-sized container or a protective, wheeled chassis. Some voting machines have even been integrated directly into collapsible polling booths.
Although the cases for voting machines fulfill their intended function of protecting a voting machine and its ancillary components, a problem arises with storing a plurality of voting machines. Election officials are faced with the task of collecting the voting machines and organizing them in a logical fashion to ensure that they are all accounted for while in storage. Inevitably, some voting machines are temporarily misplaced or are lost altogether. Officials must also ensure that the machines are not stolen or tampered with, as such activities may call into question the validity of the polling results.
An additional problem arises when the voting machines are taken out of storage and distributed to the various polling places. The machines are often taken to public locations, such as libraries and schools, prior to election day so that the machines are readily available to the election workers responsible for setting up the polling stations. This necessitates that election officials rely on the facilities of the polling place to store and secure the voting machines prior to being set up. Consequently, the voting machines may be stored in a relatively unsecured location, such as an office or storage room, leaving them susceptible to theft and tampering.
Transporting voting machines from the storage location to the various polling places is also problematic, as the machines must be individually loaded, transported and unloaded, requiring a significant amount of labor. There is also a risk that some of the cases will be inadvertently lost or delivered to the wrong polling place, hampering the voting process by leaving some polling places with fewer voting booths than are needed. There is a need for a more efficient and effective way to store, secure and transport voting machines.